The past 12 months has brought forth a number of challenges for business owners and managers across the north west and throughout the UK.

Whilst optimism is growing with UK unemployment decreasing to its lowest rate since the three months leading to April 2008, many business owners are treading cautiously into the post-recession world of business, ensuring that their organisations continue to grow and develop successfully, whilst safeguarding themselves against any potential pitfalls.

With this in mind, in order to ensure that employers enter the New Year with a sound action plan, here is a summary of the key issues that are likely to affect employers and their business moving forward.

1) National Living Wage

Employers will need to a review of all pay rates in order to ensure that, from April 2016, all workers aged 25 or over receive at least £7.20 per hour.

The new rate effectively adds another layer into the national minimum wage bands and represents a statutory minimum pay requirement. Reports suggest that half of the employers in the UK will be affected by this increase.

2) Travel Time as Working Time

A recent decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union has found that, where an employee does not work have a fixed workplace and instead their work involves travelling from client site to client site, that the time they spend traveling from home to their first appointment and then from their last appointment back home is 'working time’ for the purposes of calculating rest time.

Whilst this decision applies automatically in the public sector, it is as yet unclear how the British tribunals will apply this decision to employers in the private sector.

3) Apprenticeship Levy

An apprenticeship levy will be applied to employers with a wage bill of £3million or more, at the rate of 0.5 per cent of their wage bill, which is defined as 'total employee earnings’ of every employee.

This will fund 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020. Employers will be given an allowance of £15,000 which they can offset against their levy. As a guide, the annual levy for an employer with a £5,000,000 wage bill will be £10,000.

4) Annual leave and commission

Earlier in 2015, the European Court of Justice decided that, where a worker receives commission payments, that their holiday pay must be increased to include an element representing commission.

An Employment Tribunal in England applied this ruling in Lock v British Gas Trading and decided that a salesmen should have received a higher level of holiday pay to reflect his commission. This decision has been appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal who will hopefully provide more clarity on the aspect.

5) Disability related absences and sickness procedures

Another judgment eagerly awaited is the Court of Appeal case of Griffiths v Department for Work and Pensions . This case focusses on whether disability related absences should be discounted when determining whether absence levels have reached an unacceptable level.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that such absences did not have to be discounted. Again, the Court of Appeal is expected to shed more light for employers on how to apply their sickness absences procedures in practice.

6) Exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts

The Government has recently published draft regulations providing enforcement for people working on zero hours contracts against exclusivity clauses. These clauses, which prevent the individual from finding work elsewhere whilst under the contract, were made unlawful in Summer 2015.

When the draft regulations are implemented, zero hours employees will be able to claim unfair dismissal is they are dismissed for breached an unenforceable exclusivity clause.

7) Public sector exit payments

From 1 April 2016, employees working in the public sector will have to repay their termination payments when they return to a job in the same sub-sector within 12 months of leaving. This will only apply to employees who earn £100,000 or more.

As the Christmas season falls upon us, instead of looking pessimistically back upon the trials and tribulations of another year gone by, focussing on how to build a more positive future for your own business, in addition to the local and wider business community is vital to repairing the damage brought forth by the recession.